1984

Apple’s Most Popular Ad on the Web Isn’t “1984”

Peter Kafka in Media on August 26, 2011 at 5:55 am PT

Apple’s most famous ad isn’t the one that generates the most views. Go figure.

Motorola Goes After Apple’s iPad in Super Bowl Teaser Spot for Xoom Tablet

Ina Fried in Mobile on January 31, 2011 at 2:34 pm PT

Aiming to turn the tables on Apple, Motorola is trying to pitch its upcoming Xoom tablet as an alternative to the dominant computing culture–the same tactic Apple once used against IBM.

Viral Video: Google's Laughable–But Not So Funny–Apple Tantrum

Kara Swisher in News on May 21, 2010 at 5:07 am PT

Okay, one good dig at Apple by Google at its I/O event over the last two days seemed like the right thing to do given their recent bickering over a range of issues. Unfortunately, the continued verbal jousts at Apple by many Google execs–including CEO Eric Schmidt–onstage at the San Francisco developers conference got tired pretty quickly and soon felt petty and juvenile, and ultimately made Google look needlessly defensive. Check out the video.

Homage to Apple Actually AdWeek’s “Best of the 2000s” Awards

John Paczkowski in News on December 15, 2009 at 7:44 am PT

“People talk about technology, but Apple was a marketing company,” former Apple CEO John Sculley told the Guardian in 1997. “It was the marketing company of the decade.” Evidently that’s as true today as it was 12 years ago, because Apple has won a bundle of AdWeek’s “Best of the Decade” awards.

Kindle Ate My Homework

John Paczkowski in News on July 30, 2009 at 4:17 pm PT

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s hair-shirt apology for Kindlegate was a nice gesture, but it didn’t go over particularly well with Justin Gawronski, a Michigan high school senior who lost his homework when the retailer remotely deleted a copy of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” from his Kindle earlier this month. He’s filed a class action suit against Amazon seeking to prevent it from deleting books from Kindles in the future.

Jeff Bezos Apologizes for Kindlegate, but Can’t Promise It Won’t Happen Again

Peter Kafka in Media on July 23, 2009 at 8:01 pm PT

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos didn’t make it to his company’s earnings call today, but he did find time to apologize for Kindlegate–Amazon’s ham-fisted removal of George Orwell novels from his customers’ e-book readers. Great, right? Almost.

What Book Will Amazon Delete Next?

Peter Kafka in Media on July 21, 2009 at 5:11 am PT

Last week, Amazon acknowledged that it deleted some copies of “1984″ and “Animal Farm” from customers’ Kindles. So what book will be next? Because while Amazon has said it won’t repeat what it did last week, it hasn’t actually sworn off remote book-removal–or remote-anything removal, for that matter–altogether. Does that worry you? It should.

Amazon Rethinks Its George Orwell Removal Policy

Peter Kafka in Media on July 17, 2009 at 6:28 pm PT

Amazon has explained why it has been deleting some novels from its customers’ Kindles: It shouldn’t have been selling them in the first place. Amazon says the copies of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984″ that it removed, without warning, from some Kindles this week are “illegal”, because the publisher didn’t have the rights to sell them. Won’t happen again, the e-commerce giant says. Sort of.

Think You Own the Book You Bought for Your Kindle? You Don’t, Says Amazon.

Peter Kafka in Media on July 17, 2009 at 12:50 pm PT

Buy an e-book for Amazon’s Kindle recently? You might want to check to see if it’s still on your device. Kindle users are complaining that the e-commerce giant has removed titles from their machines this week and given them refunds in their place. What happened? The details are fuzzy, but apparently, a publisher that supplied Amazon with two George Orwell titles has decided that it doesn’t want to sell them via Amazon anymore. So away they went. Have at it, DRM-haters.